Word: chestnut
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...Given a chestnut, however, there are two things you can do with it. You can make coupe aux marrons or turkey stuffing. This production, though it has its bright moments, tends to be stuffed turkey...
...relentless march of nearly 20 years time has left no mark on Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning. It is the same fat chestnut that it was the day he finished...
What makes this play a chestnut is not so much its romance, its medieval setting, its aria-like speeches--as its flagrant predictability. The title tells you that the lady won't get burned, just as the juvenile's first glance at the ingenue tells you that they'll end up eloping. Despite the twist with which the story starts out--the hero arrives and announces he wants to be hanged--the gist of the play is not only old, but old-fashioned. Life, it says, is lousy and there are two ways out: Death and falling in love...
...there is another thing about every chestnut: for one reason or another it is dearly loved and long performed. The reason for The Lady's long and happy life is its language. Christpoher Fry has a Chinanman's fascination for high-meaning word plays, mixed with an Irishman's compulsive wit. He cannot bear to write a line, for even the lowliest of characters, which is not pure honey. The flow of mellifluous banter carries the play along, and on it floats truth after home truth. Few writers and fewer playwrights can mix colloquial expressions with genuine poetry as smoothly...
...North Viet Nam to date (v. 20 U.S. fighters lost in aerial combat). Tall and taut at 6 ft. 2 in. and 195 lbs., Olds weighs 10 lbs. less than he did as an All-America tackle on West Point's 1943 football team, has recently sprouted a chestnut R.A.F.-style handlebar mustache that horrified his wife, former Movie Actress Ella Raines, when she visited her husband in Hong Kong last March. Said she: "I thought your teeth were dirty...